BEIRUT/AMMAN: Fighters linked to Al Qaeda have seized territory from a moderate Syrian rebel group in a three-day campaign that has expanded their control into one of the few areas of northern Syria not held by hardline Islamists.
Syrian opposition activists and a military commander said the Nusra Front had taken several villages in Idlib province from the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front led by Jamal Maarouf, a prominent figure in the moderate opposition to President Bashar Al Assad.
“This has happened before and we came through it. But this time the mobilisation is very large,” said a military official in the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front.
Twenty of the group’s fighters had been killed on Monday, the official said.
“Jamal remains steadfast,” said the official, who declined to be named because he is not an official spokesman for the group. Speaking via Skype, he added that the Syria Revolutionaries’ Front had taken 25 Nusra fighters prisoner.
The Nusra Front is al Qaeda’s official affiliate in the Syrian civil war and one of the strongest insurgent groups fighting to topple Assad.
But it has been overshadowed by the Islamic State, which has seized swathes of northern and eastern Syria and is being targeted by US-led air strikes.
The official said Islamic State fighters were reinforcing the Nusra Front in the assault. But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the civil war, said it was another hardline group, Jund Al Aqsa, that was providing the backup.
Reuters
